New Regulations threaten to destroy the Health Product and Alternative Medicine industry.

With our sister organization the HPA, we are fighting for the survival of an industry and the rights of practitioners and consumers to have freedom of choice of health products and healthcare modality.

Legal papers have been issued to the Minister of Health and the Department of Health to challenge the regulations, taking the matter to the High Court.

What are the new regulations all about?

New Regulations Will Destroy the Industry

The HSASA is interested in public safety above all else. We agree that regulations need to be put in place to stop unscrupulous individuals “cowboys” from selling products which can harm the public. However the new regulations are fraught with problems and will cause up to 60 percent of the industry to close shop.

Reputable and trustworthy manufacturers and sellers are being put into the same boat as criminals, at the end of the day this is just plain unfair. Many people rely on CAMS (Complementary and Alternative Medicines) as part of their treatment from doctors and if these new laws go unchallenged CAMS products will become unavailable, this is because the companies who manufacture CAMS will close down.

Health Shops are an important part of the CAMS industry, without them many products which are freely available today would vanish. In South Africa health shops have been selling supplements and alternative medicines to the public for more than 30 years. Doctors often send their patients with scripts to get products from health shops. What right does anyone have to deny patients a choice of natural medicine?

In a nutshell the new regulations stop many sellers from being able to sell supplements and CAMS. In addition to this many manufacturers are also prevented from selling to the masses and can only sell their products through pharmacies to people who have a doctor’s prescription to buy them. Why do we need to over regulate this industry? If the regulations are carried out many jobs will be lost, many companies will close down and the Billions of rands in revenue for the economy will be lost. Not to mention the hundreds of millions in Tax revenue lost.

Until such time that fair and appropriate regulations are issued by the government we the HSASA are in opposition to them.